| | | |  | | | Danielle Dean: Bazar, 2018, 4-Kanal-HD-Video-Installation (Video still)
Courtesy the artist | | | | | | Trigger Torque | | | | 15 November 2019 - 1 March 2020 | | | | Opening: Thursday, 14 November 2019 7pm | | |  | | | Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst Jülicher Str. 97-109, DE-52070 Aachen
+49 (0)241-1807104
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www.ludwigforum.de
Tue, Wed, Fri 12-6pm; Thu 12-8pm; Sat, Sun 11am-6pm |  |
| | | | | |  | | | Danielle Dean: Bazar, 2018, 4-Kanal-HD-Video-Installation (Video still)
Courtesy the artist | | | | | | In her artistic work, Danielle Dean grapples with the construction of ethnic, social, and gender-specific roles by examining the narratives she finds in political speeches and news items for example, as well as in business records, advertisements, and popular culture. She often begins her research in historical and contemporary archives, such as the company archives of the car manufacturer Ford in Detroit, or of the Galeries Lafayette department store in Paris.
With Trigger Torque, Danielle Dean (b. 1982 in Huntsville, Alabama, USA) presents her first exhibition in Germany at the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst. Alongside new works for Aachen entitled Fordland (2019), she is also showing two additional large works: Bazar (2018) and True Red Ruin (2017).
Whether her works address the ideologization of the American landscape through the advertising of the automotive industry (Fordland, 2019), or the colonial past that can be found in department stores’ marketing strategies (Bazar, 2018), the artist examines the underlying power structures that lead to the manipulation of thoughts, feelings, and social relationships, and ultimately play a part in casting people in firmly entrenched political, social, and cultural roles and functions.
Danielle Dean subverts the visual language of advertising and transfers it to an artistic space where the line between fact and fiction is blurred. Her video installations, collages, and drawings unite various different objects, events, and locations, demonstrating that certain forms of invasion, violence, and surveillance operate across geographical and temporal boundaries, as well as the ways in which technology, architecture, marketing, and the media can be both tools of oppression and of emancipation and resistance at once. | | | | | |  | | | Danielle Dean: Long Low Line, 2019, HD video animation, (video still)
Courtesy the artist | | | | | | Fordland (2019)
While carrying out research in the Ford Motor Company archives in Detroit, Danielle Dean found advertisements produced by the car manufacturer from the early twentieth century to the present day. What they all have in common is that the landscape in which the advertised cars are presented is ideologized in line with the American Dream and its lifestyle. Yet what remains when the car is removed from the image, and one looks behind the glossy scenes of the advertising world?
At the center of the complex work, made up of objects and drawings in which the artist has adapted the aesthetics of Ford’s advertisements, is an animated film entitled Low Long Line. Here Danielle Dean has made use of the so-called multiplane camera technique, where a perspectival image is separated into consecutive layers to create a realistic 3D effect. Developed extensively by Disney Studios in the 1930s for their animated films, this technique was a crucial aspect of the industrialization of advertising.
Bazar (2018)
Danielle Dean’s video installation Bazar (2018) was conceived during the time she spent in the archives of the Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville (BHV), which has been regarded as one of the leading department stores in Paris ever since it was founded opposite the Hôtel de Ville in 1856, and which is now a member of the Galeries Lafayette Group. Legendary in Parisian retail folklore, Duchamp bought his Bottle Rack readymade here in 1914.
Danielle Dean worked with women from the banlieues (suburbs) of Paris. Many of these women are second-generation descendants of immigrants from former French colonies in Africa and Oceania. Together with the artist they analyzed BHV’s retail catalogues from the 1880s to the present day. Over the years these catalogues have consistently exemplified a certain ideal of the French people that are strikingly white, upper middle class, and Parisian. The sole image of a black woman encountered by the reading group in BHV’s catalogues was a maid who had obviously been depicted to make bed sheets appear whiter.
True Red Ruin (2017)
True Red Ruin is set in Cuney Homes, a housing complex in the Third Ward, Houston (Texas, USA), a predominantly African-American district affected by forced gentrification, which is gradually displacing its long-established residents. A second location serves as a historic backdrop for the artist: Elmina Castle in Ghana, a World Heritage Site and the oldest European building south of the Sahara. Built in 1482 by the Portuguese as a trading post, it then became a major hub of the transatlantic slave trade. By overlaying these two places and their narratives, the artist shows that certain forms of invasion, violence, and surveillance are active across geographic and temporal boundaries to this day. | | | | | |  | | | Danielle Dean: Long Low Line, 2019, HD video animation, (video still)
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© 11 Nov 2019 photo-index UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
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